About Us

The Indie Game Report is a collaborative review site co-founded by Mike Wokasch and Cassie Elle. We primarily feature reviews and Kickstarter previews of tabletop games from smaller board game publishers.

Founders

Mike Wokasch

Mike W. is a husband, father of two great kids, lawyer by profession, and a game designer at heart. He is the man behind, Fairway 3 Games, that successfully funded Starving Artists Game on Kickstarter. Mike helps support the board game community by being a moderator/curator at The Game Crafter. He’s a really big board game fan.

You can find Mike on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Mike would also like the words “genius,”“celebrated” and “cultural hero” in conjunction with his name in this introduction of who he is.

Cassie Elle

Cassie is a recently married cat lady who always loved the hidden gems in gaming, but had a difficult time finding reviews and playthroughs of indie games. Thus her journey into board game reviewing began! In Cassie’s very little spare time she volunteers as a Guardian Ad Litem.

Our contributors

Ryan Sanders

Ryan Sanders is a tiny purple meeple, stay-at-home father of 5 (what?!) and founder of The Inquisitive Meeple which is known for its interviews and getting the story behind the games. You can find him on Twitter.

Ryan often thinks he is witty and funny, as he makes people laugh, what he fails to realize is that they are laughing at him, not with him.

Dan Letzring

Dan lives in Rochester NY with his wife and two daughters. Dan and his wife play games often either alone together or with friends. Dan founded his company Letiman Games to not only design and publish his own games, but to help other designers bring their game to the public as well. Dan has had fourfive successful campaigns funded on Kickstarter and he started a blog series based on what he had learned. This blog series was later moved to TIGR and Dan became a part of the team. Dan doesn’t find Ryan as funny or witty as Ryan thinks he is. Find Dan on Twitter and Facebook or reach him by email.

Steven Aramini

Steven lives in Reno, Nevada, where he is the Creative Director for an ad agency by day and a fledgling game designer by night. He is married and has two adorable furry kids (both Cocker Spaniels). When he’s not making games, he’s playing them. Some of his favorites include Above and Below, Splendor, Kingsburg and Ticket to Ride, but he’s up for playing just about anything.

If he’s not unplugging in the Sierra Nevada somewhere, you can find him primarily on Twitter.

Dustin Oakley

An avid gamer since childhood, Dusty has been a serious hobbyist designer for several years. During that time he has run and delivered on two successful Kickstarters, orchestrated the creation of a monthly designer meetup, and won prizes in two design competitions hosted by The Game Crafter. At that site, he also serves as a professional Sanity Tester, having critiqued close to 100 rulebooks.

In addition, Dusty’s service, Tabletop Tune-up, consults on game design and offers playtesting and rulebook writing and editing. Online, he goes by the handle CrassPip on Twitter, Facebook, et al.

Jason Dobson

While Jason cut his teeth covering the video game industry for more than a decade for numerous outlets including Gamasutra and Joystiq, his heart has always been at the table with board and card games. A web designer and community manager by day working for the largest federally recognized Native American tribe in the United States, Jason is passionate about both his work and hobbies. A husband and father, Jason lives in northeast Oklahoma, and enjoys playing a variety of games, but finds deck builders and area control games of particular interest. You can find Jason on Twitter most often at @indiecardboard, or reach him through email at hello@indiecardboard.com.

Benny Sperling

Benny Sperling is a board game designer and is passionate about playing, designing and reviewing tabletop games. He loves how tabletop games bring people together and provide a space where they can communicate with others in a meaningful way. He started officially designing games in 2006. Most recently he had a successful Kickstarter campaign with DaftConcepts for his game Yakitori. Benny lives in Dallas, TX where he works in mental health counseling. His wife Jax is a successful chef and the couple have a wonderful little boy Ronan.

Carla Kopp (Weird Giraffe Games)

Carla Kopp is an engineer and board game designer currently living in Huntsville, Alabama. She loves playing board games and spends most of her free time learning new games or working to make her designs better. She’s part of Weird Giraffe Games, which has one funded game on Kickstarter, but has more games in the works.

Tom Gurganus

Tom was born at a very young age in the beautiful East Tennessee mountains. Flash forward 53 years and we find him in Durham, NC. He has a great wife, 3 nearly grown gamer kids, and growing cells for a living. He got into board games by way of indie rpgs and thinks Fiasco is the most fun you can have with 36 dice. He doesn’t play games nearly as much as he would like to. He could be betterer with grammar. Go Forth And Game is his blog where he talks with game designers and publishers, focusing
on the smaller, independent folks. He hopes to be both of those one day. He likes old science fiction
and horror movies. He’s funnier than Ryan. Really. There’s a rumor that he is a time traveling ghost.
No oysters were harmed in the writing of this bio.

Xisra

Meet Xisra (Seez -ra) which means “independent” in Thai. The logo was created by accomplished game designer and artist, Alisha Volkman.

Want us to review or preview your game, create a Learn to Play video, or be interviewed or featured?

Interested in having your table top game (e.g., board or card game) reviewed? Are you a designer or crowdfunding creator looking to be interviewed? Fill out the form below which will help us figure out how best to get you or your game featured on our site. We do not review video games.

At this time The Indie Game Report is not accepting review requests.

We do not charge for reviews or previews provided to us with reasonable time. However, for previews of Kickstarter games or other pre-production games, we request that you send a copy of the final, production version of the game.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

About TIGR

The Indie Game Report is a collaborative tabletop game review site by Mike Wokasch and Cassie Elle. We feature reviews and previews of games by small publishers and Kickstarted games as well as newsworthy interviews and special features.

If you’d like your game reviewed, fill out the form on the About Us page.